The Hype and The Hope

A ridiculous forty-four games kneel beside the chopping block in this episode, and with only two executioners - each easily bribed and both lazy with the axe - how many titles will actually fall? Pray for the mice; pray for the mystics; pray for the llamas, and pray for Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa.

We continue to stomp through Mike's proposed list of games to jettison, with this episode placing 25 more titles under the swinging bare bulb of interrogation. From sweet little bees hardly taking up any space to behemoths like Gloomhaven, we ask, "Do we actually want to play this game again... or, um, for the first time?"

In the paraphrased poetry of The Clash, "Should These Games Stay Or Should They Go?" Here begins our series of considering what is taking up too much shelf space and what needs a second chance on the table. We'll be traveling the list almost alphabetically, this time focusing mostly on the As with a few cheeky cameos from other letters as Mike's mind and mouth wander.

It may have been Milan Kundera who wrote the book of laughter and forgetting, but this episode grabs armfuls of each, and while there is no postmodern magical realism afoot, we do attempt to do an ASMR unboxing of the Barcelona board game that feels just as wonky. Also, Mike had to be bleeped three times; he could play Kurt in The Sound of Music at this rate. Somewhere on this crooked road of domestic byways and roadside stops offering rants against craft stores, we also discuss Alphabet Stoop and Chicken! Any listener who survives all the way to the final segment will find out if that's an actual punctuation mark of enthusiasm or just part of the game title. Good luck!

(Note: We probably should've mentioned that this was recorded about a week after Shari's father passed away. At the time we wanted to lose ourselves in some game talk, but upon playback it's obvious that grief and exhaustion were still in the driver's seat. Apologies for the silliness.)

This episode is about dogs, drinking, and diving into mysterious envelopes: or Spots, Distilled, and The Emerald Flame, respectively. Any quibbling over whether Mike actually knows his own gaming preferences is strictly a bonus.

This episode contains 0% laser cats but does include a scattered teaspoon of dramatic irony as we slightly misremember game titles and never realise it. Luckily, those titles are not Emerge, Ex Libris, or Earth, our three games hitting the discussion table for what seems to be an "All-E Revue". No kickline or jazz hands, but we can offer two pop quizzes about islands!

Will Forbidden Jungle do what it says on the tin, or is it just the tin that matters? Will Mike go full fanboy and buy a third copy of Kinda Sorta Terra Mystica? And is that Shari riding a meteor of nostalgia into the Tunguskan taiga with a copy of Expeditions under her arm?

Oof! We've just tumbled out the other side of the sale portal and have much to discuss about our journey to the land of Cheap and Hopefully Cheerful. (Namely Rear Window, Hues and Cues, Pan Am, and Cat in the Box.) We also reflect on our recent play of Autobahn: were we right to leadfoot that Kickstarter button? (What if we were under attack from laser cats?)

Oh, it's an odd episode, this is. But if anyone is at all interested in the games Black Hole Rainbows or Oranienburger Kanal, we're hoping they'll forgive the rest.

Are we imposing too many Disney dreams onto the third edition of Wishland? Or too many skeptical hypotheticals onto Disney Dixit? Maybe in this episode we just need to find the lost code to reasonable expectations, but will that be, in fact, The Lost Code?